Rex Murphy

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) has been forced by growing public criticism into prohibiting its on-air employees from giving speeches -- that sometimes netted thousands of dollars per appearance — to corporations and industry groups.

When an institution that I can remember from my childhood—a staggeringly long time ago—starts to rot, it’s usually from the head, like the proverbial fish. We cannot blame the MotherCorpse’s current condition, of course, on the Harper government, or the squad of yespersons he has appointed to the CBC’s board.

In one of the most puerile outbursts of imbecilic male privilege in recent memory, old male oil industry hack, Rex Murphy, felt it was necessary to give his opinion on the "feminist movement" in The National Post, much to the glee of Men's Rights Activists and reactionary dimwits everywhere.

Murphy, who confuses pontificating and using "big words" with actually saying anything of any meaning, penned a piece in which he, being the expert on the women's movement that he is, somehow makes it out as if the actions of a handful of famous women and a story out of France form the basis of feminist activism today.

Rather, it's Peter Mansbridge, chief correspondent of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, taking part in a CAPP seminar in December 2012. "He articulated that energy has moved to the forefront of news: economic, environment, safety," the CAPP caption noted, not particularly informatively.

MP Brent Rathgeber's private member’s bill, the CBC and Public Service Disclosure and Transparency Act, is scheduled to be back before the denizens of the House of Commons on Wednesday night.

Bill C-461 has no chance of passing in the form the Edmonton-St. Albert Member of Parliament desires for the simple reason that from the perspective of the Prime Minister’s Office the national broadcaster is now behaving itself with properly helpful deference to the Harper Government and its policies.

Now questions are going unanswered by the CBC, and avoided altogether by Murphy himself, about a conflict between Murphy potentially being paid to speak at oilsands industry events and his role as a commentator at the CBC.

First to report on the potential conflict, longtime investigative journalist Andrew Mitrovica wrote on iPolitics that he was taken on a "disturbing odyssey into the CBC’s Byzantine world of subterfuge, duplicity and plain lunacy," as he tried to unravel Murphy's relationship with the CBC and the oilsands industry in Canada.

It is lamentable that commentator Rex Murphy, who sometimes acts like a resident apologist for the fossil fuel industry, on January 17 devoted his weekly commentary on CBC television's The National, to undermining rather than encouraging citizens working against massive vested interests, for a habitable planet for future generations.

In his Saturday National Post column, Rex Murphy claimed that Canada's Green party has no goal other than to get me elected as an MP -- and that this has been the case for "two or three general elections."

In fact, I have led the party into only two general elections. The Green Party, unlike any of the other parties represented in Parliament, is truly grassroots. The leader is not the boss, and electing the leader was not a priority before 2011.

Sometimes I forget that Canada is a massive country where people are separated into silos.

Idle No More has reminded me that there exists massive gulfs between people, experiences and awareness.

I don’t actually fault the folks who aren’t aware of their ignorance. After an aggressive social media campaign, flash mobs, rallies, blockades, coordinated actions, letters of support from national unions and a hunger strike, the media coverage has still been significantly lacking.

How can someone know what’s going on if none of their friends are talking about it? How can they talk about it if there’s an effective media blackout?